From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 4990 invoked by alias); 23 Jul 2006 22:57:18 -0000 Received: (qmail 4982 invoked by uid 22791); 23 Jul 2006 22:57:17 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from nevyn.them.org (HELO nevyn.them.org) (66.93.172.17) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31.1) with ESMTP; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:57:14 +0000 Received: from drow by nevyn.them.org with local (Exim 4.54) id 1G4msq-0004vE-7O for gdb-patches@sourceware.org; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 18:57:12 -0400 Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:57:00 -0000 From: Daniel Jacobowitz To: gdb-patches@sourceware.org Subject: Re: [RFC] Add expat to the GDB sources Message-ID: <20060723225712.GA18743@nevyn.them.org> Mail-Followup-To: gdb-patches@sourceware.org References: <20060718134048.GA15685@nevyn.them.org> <20060723224032.GA5168@trixie.casa.cgf.cx> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20060723224032.GA5168@trixie.casa.cgf.cx> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.11+cvs20060403 X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2006-07/txt/msg00323.txt.bz2 On Sun, Jul 23, 2006 at 06:40:32PM -0400, Christopher Faylor wrote: > Just as a meta-issue, I have to wonder at the precedent of one of the > projects which shares 'src' adding directories to the top-level. > > I just built gdb on linux and I see that it pulls in ncurses but there > is no ncurses directory in src. Why can't we just say that "building > gdb requires a native expat library >= some version" like we do with > ncurses? Any other project which uses expat would just add detection of > the expat library to the configure phase. > > I've really always hated the habit of duplicating (and essentially forking) > other project's source code in 'src' and putting expat there just seems > like a step backwards to me. I'm going to let you and Mark argue this one out, I'm afraid. We (CodeSourcery) chose to use XML for a couple of projects in order to avoid wheel reduplication. Which means using a pre-written library. Personally, I think a simple list of libraries that users need in order to build GDB would be reasonable. But I was quite specifically told that other GDB developers (Mark definitely said this - I'm not sure if Eli did also) were unhappy at the idea of requiring external libraries. So I added it to src. I'd be happy to dump that and put it in the "Installing GDB" chapter of the manual (and NEWS) instead. It's not like it's a pain to build; it configures out of the box everywhere I've tried it. I like the idea of using more preinstalled libraries, in general, and as long as we bother to document our requirements I don't see the problem. -- Daniel Jacobowitz CodeSourcery